What people want from their family physician.

The public wants and is satisfied by care provided within a patient-physician relationship based on understanding, honesty, and trust. If the U.S. health care system is ever to become patient-centered, it must be designed to support these values and sustain, rather than fracture, the relationships people have with their primary physician.

Few people in the United States can identify primary care physicians.

Almost one decade after the Institute of Medicine (IOM) defined primary care, only one third of the American public is able to identify any of the medical specialties that provide it, and only 17 percent were able to accurately distinguish primary care physicians from medical or surgical specialists and non-physicians. This lack of discrimination compromises the goal of achieving primary care for all and merits immediate attention.